ZDF/3sat Movies

Director Thomas Heise picks up the biographical pieces left by his family, and composes an epic picture of four generations of his family, of a country, of a century.

Portrait of the Swiss artist H.R. Giger.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio" is a famous spectacle that is enigmatic and exotic at the same time - and just because of this it is not only perfect for the fantastic stage sets of the marionette theatre, but for Ustinov's winking presentation as well. Already in 1782 the...

Don Giovanni, opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Italian libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte) that premiered at the original National Theatre in Prague on October 29, 1787. The opera’s subject is Don Juan, the notorious libertine of fiction, and his eventual descent into hell. For Mozart, it...

Does history with all its nightmares have to keep repeating itself? What bolsters the thin layer that shields us from the abyss?

Così fan tutte, comic opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that premiered in Vienna on January 26, 1790. It is the last of his three operas with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, the first two being The Marriage of Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787). Presented by the Salzburg Marionette...

With the opera "Le nozze di Figaro" commenced the remarkably successful cooperation between Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. The first night of "Figaro", presumably Mozart's most perfect musical comedy, was held in Vienna on May 1st, 1786. It is based on Beumarchais' "scandalous" comedy...

The ensemble of buildings that makes up the maternity clinic and art school in Hamburg where the director taught is the starting point for this sober interrogation of how motherhood and career can be combined based on three generations of German women.

Was grandpa a Nazi? When director Jens Schanze confronts his mother with her father's past, decades of silence have passed. The information that emerges about grandpa does not fit with the loving father that Jens' mother always talked about. Jens and his four older sisters never met their...

Coal mining has shaped Lusatia for generations. In the GDR it was still an important industrial location but, after the fall of communism, companies shut down and livelihoods were destroyed. With the planned phase out of coal, the region is facing another upheaval. Britt Beyer takes a sensitive...

The documentary film by and with Stefan Hayn describes how election posters, cigarette, detergent and cinema advertisements refer more or less clearly to topics such as tax legislation, security in old age, increasing fears about losing one's job, and domestic and foreign policy crises. In order to...